Appendix I - Furse's Legal Cases

Summary

Furse mentions cases in local and national courts but few can be corroborated from those court records. Quarter sessions records for Devon, for example, survive only from 1593, the year of his death.

As for the courts at Westminster, the finding aids at the National Archives are not easy to use. Often they depend on knowing the date, and that is precisely what Furse usually fails to supply.

For example, it would be interesting to find William Moreshead's pardon for murder. Pardons were enrolled in the Patent Rolls, but there is no complete index, or county arrangement, and without a date it is not possible to find this pardon. John Moreshead was imprisoned, albeit sympathetically, for two years, and then released by gaol delivery. Gaol delivery records at the National Archives are JUST1 and JUST3, but such finding aids as exist are useless without a given date. Again, the case against Reynell for Fostardes Park cannot be traced in Chancery or Star Chamber because of the shortcomings of the finding aids.

Two cases certainly can be amplified from the public records at The National Archives. They concern the tenement Furse, and the manor of Skyrrydon, now Skerraton.

Furse

A suit in Chancery, Requests and Common Pleas. This case can be traced as REQ 2/248/12, Roger Olden, weaver, and Alice his wife, versus Robert Furse (misleadingly indexed as ‘messuage in Dean Prior’). The names Hockway, Olding and Furse do not show up in the index to C2, Chancery Proceedings, nor CP 25/2, feet of fines. Roger Olden, delightfully described as of ‘Cherryton fflippen', which must reflect both local pronunciation and a clerk or scrivener's mishearing of it, complains that about four years before Robert Furse of Dean Prior was lawfully seised in a messuage or tenement called Furse in Cheriton, and for a sum of money demised and granted it to one Richard Hookewaye deceased and Alice Langham for three lives. Hookway died a year and a half ago, Olden entered by right of Alice now his wife, and held the premises quietly until now, when one William Hooper offered Furse a large sum of money for it. According to the plaintiff, Furse made out that he had entered by force, and ‘so pluckt him out of possession thereof and gave it to Hooper.